How to promote your business in Germany with Xing. Part 2

We continue to study the advertising functionality of the Xing social network, a local analogue of LinkedIn, designed mainly for a German-speaking audience (Germany, Austria, Switzerland). A general overview was given in the previous article. I recommend that you first read the first part, which tells about all the "delights" of using Xing to promote your business. The second part is devoted to the technical details of the professional account.

Preamble: Xing Business Performance

The network was founded in 2003 and has been growing by about 1 million users annually for the last 10 years. Today, there are 20,000+ companies and ~22 million users registered on the platform.

The social network's revenue growth rate (100% sure - from advertising and subscriptions) over these 10 years averages +20% from year to year. The data is averaged and demonstrates stable dynamics, which is very good for us as advertisers. The platform is developing quickly and steadily - this is the key to success. And the fact that the company went public back in 2006 indicates high-quality management at all stages. A detailed financial statement can be found on the stock exchanges under the ticker NWO.

The main functionality of the Xing professional account

If we talk about the advertising capabilities of the platform, they are given out by the developers in doses. More and more automatic functions that are available for configuration are “flying” into the account. Here I mean that some of the functionality of the advertising account is opened only through a request to the sales department and subject to overcoming the entry threshold for the budget. As Xing improves sales and sees growth, these functions are released into the mass market (general advertising account). So, recently the account has an option for video advertising with a budget of 3 EUR per day (~90 EUR per month), although previously it was only available from 5k EUR through a personal request.

The international segment of the market is represented by a subsidiary brand of Xing - the Kununu portal, the functions of which are also available upon a separate request. This portal has a similar target audience, 1 million business profiles, 4.7 million reviews and you can also advertise, but on a European and global scale. The main features are salary comparison, the ability to rate an employer, share an opinion on the corporate culture.

But let's take things in order.

So, the company's marketing functions have five main components:

1. Subscriptions to the extended functionality of the social network (for both individuals and companies, and for the latter the subscription cost depends on the size of the business).
2. The platform's extended functions include personalized email newsletters and mentions in news digests in the official social network newsletter (by the way, their design is really nice).
3. Advertising opportunities outside of Xing (using the network's own specialists, direct sale of customer data to DSPs for use in other systems/neural networks for training).
4. Рекламный кабинет с пятью типами рекламных плейсментов (по аналогии с 11 целями в Facebook).
5. Posting vacancies for HR.

In this article, we will focus on the key things for us – subscriptions for a company (group/profile) and the advertising account itself.

Why do you need Xing premium subscriptions?

Like most professional networks for work, Xing has limited functionality for both personal and business profiles. Additional options are available by subscription. In fact, they are necessary if you are looking for open vacancies in the DACH region (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) or, as a recruiter, want to find employees for your company there.

I will not go into details, but in general, Xing provides two types of subscriptions for individuals (premium and pro) and for companies (one expands the functions of business pages, the second allows you to publish vacancies for 1-2 months).

Let's talk about the impact of subscriptions on the results and functionality of advertising

From the point of view of the advertising account, without subscriptions only one function is “cut” – promotion of posts/news from the company’s business page. The news itself can be published on the page, but promotion is not available:

The latest news is present on the business page, but the advertising account “doesn’t see” it and the “Continue” button doesn’t appear:

Business page, design options for community growth (management)

Information about the company can be placed on the business page for free:

• News (picture, video, link to website, text) without advertising;
• About us;
• Location.

Other features are available by subscription:

• Jobs (and this will open up another level of subscriptions to promote the jobs themselves, from 539 EUR per month per piece);
• Employees;
• Contacts.

By and large, these features can be perceived as a landing page constructor. In terms of practical benefits, if you are going to direct traffic to a business page for any purpose (grow a community, run a blog for clients, partners, use it as part of a brand's HR platform), then you only need the "Contacts" button :). These options are not activated separately, a subscription can only be purchased in full for all functions and only for a year. Today, it costs 2988 EUR per year for companies with up to 50 people (more - more expensive).

Xing advertising account features (Professional version)

Now let's delve into the formats and their nuances, and consider the available formats and rates.

• Website (this is the only format that is available without company confirmation in the individual's account) - traffic to any external site. Simply put, this is the main tool for attracting PPC (pay-per-click) traffic to Xing. Just a picture, no carousels, complex banners, etc. Standard 16:9, from 1200 x 675 pixels, plus text up to 60 characters in the title and up to 140 in the description. In general, you will have to test ads by manually selecting offers and images. Approximately as now in Telegram Ads.
• A lead form – 60/120 characters of text in creative, 7 types of call to action in the lead form. You can collect from 2 to 7 data fields, another 250/90 characters of text are placed in the form. Unlike all modern advertising accounts, it does not have lead optimization (with payment for leads). Only buying impressions is available. The minimum budget per day is 2 EUR, from 1 EUR per 1000 impressions, the recommended starting point is 35–40 EUR. Only one picture with a description in creative.
• A video ad – 60/80 characters of text in creative, up to 5 GB of video (that is, you can upload a cool 4K video or even a short film). AVI, MOV, MP4 formats. The account can track video views by 25/50/75/100 percent. You can evaluate the involvement of audience segments in the video. And combine data on CTR and involvement with lead generation. Even if manually, it’s already not bad (the last time I did this was about six years ago).

• A Xing page is essentially attracting subscribers to a company's business page. By default, the function is used to attract employees to the company. It may be relevant for projects on digital-HR-recruitment in the German-speaking segment. As an experiment, you can attract clients to content in the community, this is a very popular mechanic in the CIS.
• A Xing page news

Important information for those who are taking their company to other markets

• We run aTelegram channel, where we share our team’s experience and publish cases on entering foreign markets.
• My guide with an overview of PR platforms in the CIS for promoting business in the IT segment can be downloaded for free here.
• Our paid guide to foreign marketing is available at the link.